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S_w

Well done for sticking it out here. I think a break from the board would be good right now to give you time and chance to consolidate and work out more of what you are about.


The forums can at times concentrate your attention on the negative. The negative about the situation and about you which can be catalytic). Sometimes it is good just to be and practice looking forward and focus on where you want to be and as Queenie taught me, always to be thankful and grateful for what we do have.

You are a good person - you just did a bad thing (just like we all do).

I hope you guys move forwards smoothly.

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Originally Posted by SDCW_man
Originally Posted by saddestwife
This is a post to all the WS�s who are resisting talking to SteveH or wondering whether they should make the call themselves. On the forum, I see mostly WW�s resisting but maybe that is episodic.

Just. Do. It.

You don�t want to talk to him because you think you know what he is going to say and you don�t want to hear it.

*You don�t have a clue what he is going to say and you DO want to hear it.

Your situation is hopeless. You are so entangled you can�t breathe.

*He wants to help you release yourself from your purgatory and send you to the marriage you want and deserve.

It�s too much trouble and too much money.

*It�s an hour of your life and a couple of hundred dollars. If you think that�s a lot of money, check out the hourly rate for a decent lawyer or therapist.

Your M may end and you may build a beautiful life with your AP. It is statistically less likely than winning the mega lottery, but it happens.

But don�t go out with a �what if�, particularly if you have kids, because that �what if� will haunt you the rest of your natural life, at every school play, at graduations, at weddings, and the birth of your grandchildren and family funerals and you and your BS will be at every one of those events and you will wonder �what if�.

It�s an hour of your life. JDI (if that isn�t an acronym here, it should be).

Steve wants to help you release yourself from the purgatory of your affair and send you to the M you want and deserve.

You are safe talking to him.

He isn�t going to beat you up.

He isn�t going to lecture you or dictate to you.

You are safe talking to him.

You matter.

You do.

Without you, there is no M.

Make the call and listen. It�s only an hour.

And if you find I am wrong, please come to my thread and beat me up � I�m used to it ��.

I�m posting this on my thread because if there is wisdom and healing in it, it will spread from camp fire to camp fire and if not, it needs to stay here.

WAY too much time studying the Old Testament I think,�..

SW,

Wow...I'm sincerely impressed! I'm so glad you didn't bury you head in the sand and choose to talk to SH instead. Excellent work thus far...

Is is possible that we may have a WW here who is really "getting it" and truly recovering??? I hope so...

Best wishes and keep moving forward

SadW:

I have been hard on you, but I have been in your shoes... Even worse.

But I got the MB Religion. Your getting it. I am glad that you called SH.

Maybe Pepperband can put this on her "notable Posts" thread.


Keep working it.

LG

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OK, I said I wasn't going to post but something's come up that is driving me around the bend.

My H has changed the password on his laptop and won't tell me what it is. He says its because the day we decided to D, I went on his laptop and deleted the prior month's emails between he and I -- there are a lot of intimate things about me in them (not about A -- just about me) and no way was I going to let anyone read them, collaborative divorce or not.

I know lawyers.

I haven't emailed him anything like that since (and won't).

I'm not suspicious of him or anything. I just can't figure out why -- it feels like game playing which I would find troubling only because we have enough problems without creating more. Or maybe retaliation -- "you lost your right to secrets, but I didn't."

I'm trying to be O & H and don't know whether I should leave this alone. I don't really care about being able to access his laptop -- I have my own. But still ....


WS
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I'm trying to be O & H and don't know whether I should leave this alone. I don't really care about being able to access his laptop -- I have my own. But still ....


Drop it for now. YOU'RE the one who is learning to practice MB methods.


Widowed 11/10/12 after 35 years of marriage
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“In a sense now, I am homeless. For the home, the place of refuge, solitude, love-where my husband lived-no longer exists.” Joyce Carolyn Oates, A Widow's Story
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You went into his private email account and deleted messages!

You can't seriously be asking this question!

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Would changing your password be equivalent to his having an affair if the tables were turned?

One thing I sense about your H is that if OM had given you AIDS, your H would have stayed with you to the end. He sounds like an endless loyal man, who has to learn not to treat other people as his possessions.

God Bless
Gamma


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My H has changed the password on his laptop and won't tell me what it is.


By the way, how do you know this, seeing how you really don't care about having access and you have your own and all?


Widowed 11/10/12 after 35 years of marriage
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What stands out to me... you make no apology for hijacking his email account and deleting whatever emails took your fancy!

I can hear you screaming for blood if he�d done that to you!

What a self-absorbed woman you are.



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Of course I apologized. Don't be ridiculous. I told him at the time - a month ago - that I had done it and why.

Look, he had just told me he had decided to divorce me, period. We had finished discussing property division, talked about custody for our remaining minor child and arranged that I would call the lawyer in hopes we could keep the legal fees down. At that point, I was protecting myself.

I needed something off his laptop. He was right there. I thought I had forgotten the password, but when I asked he said he'd changed it etc.

I don't get the changing password/affair equivalency analogy at all. There's nothing wrong with him changing his password, any more than there would be anything wrong with me changing mine which I'm not going to do so don't get agitated.

He has done something similar to me, and I did scream for blood, but I believe he won't do it again.

I was just wondering why and since it is troubling me I was thinking about asking him. I'm going to table it - I'm the one practicing MB concepts.

I need to stay off the forum because I get so upset when I read replies that feel vicious like "self absorbed woman" and I just want to give up then I got the exact right answer for the exact right reason from princessmeggy.



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Originally Posted by saddestwife
OK, I said I wasn't going to post but something's come up that is driving me around the bend.

My H has changed the password on his laptop and won't tell me what it is. He says its because the day we decided to D, I went on his laptop and deleted the prior month's emails between he and I -- there are a lot of intimate things about me in them (not about A -- just about me) and no way was I going to let anyone read them, collaborative divorce or not.

I know lawyers.

I haven't emailed him anything like that since (and won't).

I'm not suspicious of him or anything. I just can't figure out why -- it feels like game playing which I would find troubling only because we have enough problems without creating more. Or maybe retaliation -- "you lost your right to secrets, but I didn't."

I'm trying to be O & H and don't know whether I should leave this alone. I don't really care about being able to access his laptop -- I have my own. But still ....
Saddest, I like you. grin Because it's so easy to post to you when you keep banging your head against the same brick wall!

I refer you to a July 25 post on your thread:

... Quit keeping score.

Your H may not be willing to do this right away. Eventually, for you to have a fulfilling marriage, you will need him to do so. But for NOW, you must make the first step.

Yep, unilateral disarmament. That's the humility of which you were advised on your first day here. The viewpoint of "No matter what he's done to me in the past, what I've done is plenty bad enough to warrant my full attention to fixing." Persistently & patiently, even though there's not a guaranteed outcome as far as his reciprocating is concerned. That's the "gratuitous act of trust" which you need to commit...


Read it again.

twoxfour
twoxfour
twoxfour


Me: FWH, 50
My BW: Trust_Will_Come, 52, tall, beautiful & heart of gold
DD23, DS19
EA-then-PA Oct'08-Jan'09
Broke it off & confessed to BW (after OW's H found out) Jan.7 2009
Married 25 years & counting.
Grateful for forgiveness. Working to be a better husband.
"I wear the chain I forged in life... I made it link by link, and yard by yard" ~Jacob Marley's ghost, A Christmas Carol
"Do it again & you're out on your [bum]." ~My BW, Jan.7 2009
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Hi sw,

Just signed on and quite frankly I am sort of astounded that you are posting so soon. Not that that is bad or in anyway negative - it just sounded really like you needed a break (retreat, sabbatical, or whatever you wanted to call it) to recharge and to think. That is because I just felt that you are letting this get Too emotional for You, and just needed some back-off time. In this sense I feel that some things (like the changed password) become more magnified to you, that is all. And, I certainly do not view you as 'self-absorbed'. Frankly you have stuck this out in your search, and again I commend you for that. Best way I can describe my feeling that you should have a break to think, meditate, and read more here is my recent decision to get back into shape. Simple exercises really - pushups, situps, chinups, etc., etc. Pushups are the hardest. First and second days great! Third and fourth days good. Fifth day, not as motivated but do them anyway. Sixth and Seventh days struggle. Then eighth day a veritable struggle and feeling like giving up because I could not even match the day 3 amount! I.e., I decided to take a day off after four days rather than really push it in the beginning. If I hadn't, I would have abandoned that part of my medical makeover program. I was in h.s. and college sports and coaches always provided a day of relief. Guess at age 68 I thought that I was superman.

Well, hope you see my point - the more you react here if you feel under undue stress, you are going to get some negative comments, and eventually become discouraged from continuing. Just my thoughts.

Tom

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sw,

By way, and am sure you already recognize this, taking time off does not mean taking time off from working on your M and working on what you feel is best for you and H. It just means taking time off from the temptation and the reality of placing yourself into argumentative postions and using up your valuable energy on that. Okay.

Tom

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Saddest,

I am sort of at a loss about this. Here is why. I guess we have been around here long enough to know that it often takes people time to process what has happened to them, and yes the consequences of their decisions. I am not surprised he did this, he knows he is not safe. You have said here many times in the last few days that you feel like walking. He knows you went off and found another man.

As he processes things, ideas (good and bad) will come to him and he will act on them. You said
Quote
Of course I apologized. Don't be ridiculous. I told him at the time - a month ago - that I had done it and why.
Yup, what did you tell him? That you don't trust him? That you don't want him to have what you said? That you had the right to do what you want to his computer? What did you tell him Saddest?

He is protecting himself because he knows you have lied, you have cheated and that you don't really too much about honesty. You have said these things to us. He cannot predict what you can do or will do now. In short you have lost his trust and the consequences of this is that he is protecting himself.

Now if this really bothers you, then you and your H need to sit down and discuss how he can begin to trust you again. How your own lack of trust in him has harmed the relationship. But, frankly, given what you have done in the past I would have changed the password as well.

Saddest, are you starting to see why lack of honesty really hurts a marriage? No matter if you told him or not, you failed to tell him about many other things that have hurt him deeply. Hence, we preach open and honesty to you. It really is the only way to go.

Please think about this.

God Bless,

JL

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JL -- I have answers to your questions -- but for now I have my answer. My H isn't saying he doesn't trust me with access to his laptop. He's telling me he doesn't trust me, period. The password thing was puzzle to me, and I love puzzles. ALL information about H's thinking is good information -- I'm reading the tea leaves here.

Tom, I sometimes think men are like anthropologists when it comes to understanding women, a foreign species. They can research about the foreign species all they like, but there is simply no substitute for on the ground, close quarters observation for 40 years. Some men live with a woman for 40 years and don�t observe much � you are clearly not one of them. So you absolutely nailed me, and I am humbly taking your sage advice and taking a break from thinking about this for a few days.

GloveOil -- I'm chewing on it.



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Originally Posted by Nomdeplume
You went into his private email account and deleted messages!

You can't seriously be asking this question!

While married, my wife & I really had no such "privacy". Yes, we had separate email addresses but they were under the same ISP and shared a single password. Prior to the affair, neither of us used email all that much and our respective inboxes contained little but work stuff, jokes from friends/relatives, and (mutual) travel/airline itineraries. Either of us could "check" the other's inbox but rarely did so because there wasn�t anything �secret� to see.

Shared password OR Single joint email account = TRANSPARENCY & �OPEN BOOK� & �NOTHING TO HIDE�

In other words, a TRUE MARITAL PARTNERSHIP

That changed when the marital �crisis� began and with my then-WW�s still-clandestine affair that preceded it. [Of course, she denied that it did even when �out-ed� and to this day still confabulates and makes typical foggy bulls**t excuses to cover that nasty little fact up. One wonders why, since the timeline and history of her adultery has long ago become common knowledge to virtually everyone and I was basically �the last to know�. Thus, the insanity and self-delusion of waywards�]

I much later found out that then-secret-WW had logged on to my email account and deleted email from OMW meant to expose to me the affair which I had been suspicious of but naively was still believing WW�s denials of. She also used our computer/MSMoney program (which of course she had full access to) to obtain all our up-to-date financial info so she could plan �her 50%� of all we had built together economically. WW later bragged about how stealthy and strategic and successful she had been in keeping me in the dark this way (and others) to many of those around her, including a �good friend� who also was a friend of OMW and has long ago thrown xWW/OM out of her life.

Something about this was particularly violating to me when I first learned of all of it back in 2008. It was almost like�having an affair was horrific enough but the two-faced, back-stabbing, conniving, scheming, plotting, deceit, and manipulation utilized to CYA and finance it was EVEN WORSE. It really was this stuff (including the satisfaction and glee WW displayed towards others with regard to her betrayal & deceptiveness) that destroyed the last residual flickers of all the honor, value, trust, comfort, love, and respect I had had for her for over a decade.

In this day and age, with the profusion of communication technology immediately and cheaply available, it has become so much easier to initiate and maintain a secret adulterous affair than it ever was before. People have cellphones, email addresses, Facebook/Twitter accounts, etc�.and often several of each (they are at least VERY OBTAINABLE). Affordable technology has been a boon to productivity and legitimate communication but, like Frankenstein�s monster, can also be misused for vile, deceptive, and dark purposes.

NO MARRIED PERSON SHOULD BE ON FACEBOOK OR TWITTER OR MYLIFE OR MYSPACE OR HAVE SECRET PASSWORDS OR �PRIVATE� CELLPHONES. There is no legitimate need for a married man/woman to have �social networking� or private communications or secret finances from his/her spouse�at least no need that justifies the obvious risks that are involved. These avenues, esp. the social networking sites, are virtual invitations to inappropriate extra-marital relationships and they frankly advertise �See who is looking for you!� & �Reconnect with former classmates, colleagues, friends, and lost loves!� These things are for SINGLE PEOPLE ONLY.

Ok, I�m off my soapbox now�.

Saddestwife, your BH had an email account that you obviously were voluntarily privy to via a shared password. Therein you found NOTHING incriminating that he was �hiding� from you. You only found intimate messages from YOU that he must have valued enough to save. Those things may very well have been �private� from others but they were certainly not private BETWEEN you two. That is the very essence of an intimate marriage��our intimate communications are for our eyes only� but there is transparency between the partners.

I suspect that your BH, like me in the past, was even further violated by what can only be described as SELFISHLY MOTIVATED ADVERSARIAL actions on your part. You were afraid that somehow he might use your private marital emails to him to embarrass you in court in a divorce proceeding. Of course, those thoughts could never even have entered his head until you brought a 3rd-party into a place mutually reserved for only 2. The big picture here is that your adultery and deceit and cover-up has converted what once was a cooperative intimate partnership into an ADVERSARIAL & SUSPICIOUS RELATIONSHIP.

Your BH has understandably gone into self-protection & individual-defense mode. I�m sure he is extremely hurt and changed his password, not because he has much to �hide� there, but simply because he feels justifiably wounded and unwilling to trust you at all. You have betrayed and lied to him about the most fundamental element of intimacy. Frankly, I wouldn�t bring up his new password one bit. He has every right to protect himself (even in this minor way) from any further emotional trauma and you have WAY BIGGER FISH TO FRY if you want to recover intimacy with him.

MB & SAA teach us that recovering waywards (no recovery is possible without these):
Should be transparent, open, honest, and meet the BS�s ENs full while expecting little-to-nothing in return for some time.
Should not demand the BS to �get over it� or �sweep it all under the rug�.
Should not use the BS�s past failings, shortcomings, and mistakes to justify their own (far more devastating) betrayal.
Should EARN back respect and trust slowly with consistent, repentant words and deeds.
Should empathize with the BS�s wounded state and restore him/her FIRST.

I would start there and not worry about a password�that is the least of your concerns and duties at present. twoxfourQUIT KEEPING SCORE AND FOCUS ON WHAT IS IMPORTANT HERE. Stop being a lawyer trying to �win�; just GIVE first.


xWW:
Secret LTA w/ thrice married OM at her workplace; EA/PA starts ~ 2005-6
Files & completes D - 2007, OM/OMW#3 D - 2007, Affairage - immediately thereafter
Disappears in 2006 w/o even a goodbye to anyone, Never a paragraph of real truth ever spoken
Me/xBH:
M "for life", Suspicions (denied) & desperate Plan A latter-half '06
1st D-day 1/07, full truth D-day 7/08 (all via 3rd parties)
NC w/ xWW 8/08-date, better off w/o unrepentant vileness, betrayal, & rampant deceit in my life anymore
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Originally Posted by GloveOil
Saddest, I like you. grin Because it's so easy to post to you when you keep banging your head against the same brick wall!

I refer you to a July 25 post on your thread:

... Quit keeping score.

Your H may not be willing to do this right away. Eventually, for you to have a fulfilling marriage, you will need him to do so. But for NOW, you must make the first step.

Yep, unilateral disarmament. That's the humility of which you were advised on your first day here. The viewpoint of "No matter what he's done to me in the past, what I've done is plenty bad enough to warrant my full attention to fixing." Persistently & patiently, even though there's not a guaranteed outcome as far as his reciprocating is concerned. That's the "gratuitous act of trust" which you need to commit...


Read it again.

Spot on, GloveOil!

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Originally Posted by SDCW_man
NO MARRIED PERSON SHOULD BE ON FACEBOOK

I do have a FB which I set up a few months ago to get pictures of my kids. I did have a male friend from college, fraternity brother of H, who was divorcing his W who was a close friend in college contact me -- his intentions were, in retrospect, clear but I found the whole notion so absurd I tossed it off. But after reading this site for a while (long before I ever posted) I told my H about it, it bothered H who saw what was going through the friend's mind right off, and asked me to drop him which I did. So you are right -- I'll keep my FB account as I do enjoy seeing what my kids and their friends are up to, but I am not accepting any friend requests from males, regardless of how benign they seem to me.

Originally Posted by SCDW_man
Therein you found NOTHING incriminating that he was �hiding� from you.

I am big on privacy to put it mildly -- I have never pried into his email or his phone, nor do I think there was anything to find.

Originally Posted by SCDW_man
You only found intimate messages from YOU that he must have valued enough to save.

When I deleted the emails, we had just finished a long conversation about divorcing. It was DD3.

DD1. H read my text messages and learns of OM. I deny scope of engagement.
DD2 (one week later) H read my text messages with my friend on her phone, and learns it was a PA, leaves for 3 weeks, then comes back for S19's high school graduation for a week, then I leave for a month.
DD3 (late June) H asks me if I am still in contact with OM, and I say yes. ALL he wanted was for me to say I would end it. I couldn't say it because I KNEW I was totally out of control -- TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL -- and I wasn't going to lie because I had no clue what I was going to do. H says divorce, I say OK, we talked about details for 5 hours, then made the sweetest love we have made in 35 years. It was surreal. I think I will look back on it, regardless of outcome, as one of the strangest days of my life.
A Ended: July 8.
DD4: yet to come.

The emails I deleted were all from the months we were separated. And I was really only after one, but I had no idea which one it was so I deleted them all.

The one was an email I sent him listing the things I felt the most shame about in my whole life, those moments that still make my skin crawl. Like when I started a new school in 7th grade and the "popular girls" came up to me and I thought they wanted to be my friend, but it turned out that I had started my first period, not even knowing what a period was, and the blood was showing. And that one is a big nothing compared to the rest. There was no way in hell I was EVER going to allow anyone else to read that -- sure the lawyer part of me kicked in and thought "how could this be used against me". But the lawyer part was a dim voice compared to the panic I felt that that my kids or my family or ANYONE on the planet might ever know those things. No one beside my H was ever going to read those things. It was stuff I have never told a living soul.

Shame on me for putting in in writing, but I would delete again in a heartbeat.

Originally Posted by SCDW_man
The big picture here is that your adultery and deceit and cover-up has converted what once was a cooperative intimate partnership into an ADVERSARIAL & SUSPICIOUS RELATIONSHIP.

There was no intimate partnership. There was an armed camp. My A took an adversarial relationship and put it in hyperdrive.

I've dropped the password thing -- I don't care about having the password. I just wondered what it meant, and I knew the reason he was giving me wasn't the real reason, i.e., he isn't worried I am going to get on his laptop and delete stuff. He doesn't trust me in any area of life. I can work with that. I can't work with not understanding what is going through his head.

Sooo. Conversation tonight. I think I screwed up. Got on the subject of divorce where he said "if you divorce me" and I said "don't you mean if you divorce me?" H replied he would only do that if I strayed again, and I responded "and rightly so." H said what I should have said was "I will never do that again as I love you so much." I'm trying so hard but the right words elude me, maybe because there are no right words.

On the bright side, he said he had "only" thought about the A 4-5 times today, and I said "when it comes in your mind, think about whether there is anything I can do or say to help you with it, and come to me because I can't know what you are thinking." I THINK that was the right thing to say, but I am sure you will tell me if I am wrong.

On my front, I was a Stepford Wife (heavens, there are probably people on this forum who don't even know what that means), then I was a Stepford Wife having an A, and now I am a Stepford Wife on steroids trying to fix it but it feels like fixing it means returning to the status quo ante. There is a lot of talk about being O and H but I am NOT being O and H AT ALL. I'm back into the familiar territory of taking care of H without saying what I need and it is wearing me out. I think this is a problem without a solution.

I am going to talk to SHarley again this week before I ask my H to talk to him -- I see some windows where I MAY be able to get away for an hour for that talk. But I have to fix my cell phone issue or find a land line.

I I am not talking to any friends or family members and the isolation with just talking to/being with H 24/7 without asking for or expecting anything is wearing me down. I'm was emotionally scared of H before I had the A, and I'm still scared. If anyone has any thoughts on how I might recharge, please chime in.


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SW, believe me. I understand what you are saying. There is no way for a wayward to not feel what you are feeling, because if you are like me, you have been looking out for #1 all your life. You probably would not have achieved what you have achieved in the professional world without focusing on #1. It is absolutely patterned in you, and it shows in everything you write. That kind of thinking is also reinforced, not only by professional and financial success, but by every subtle message force fed to us about self, the cult of self, that is part of the mythology that drives our consumer society since you were old enough to look at a television set. But here is the truth: Your addiction to taking care of your own needs is your enemy in the world of relationships, marriage, and all of the real things that define our lives and make life worth living. When you are on your deathbed, are you going to remember the great lawsuit that you won, or the terrific report you filed, or are you going to remember the smile of your child or the incredible sunset that overwhelmed you on numerous occasions? Our emotional life is where we really reside and what drives us and makes life worth living.

You have inflicted a near mortal wound on your H, in the course of this cold war you two have been fighting, and he is gashed and bleeding. He is wounded, possibly mortally, and it will take a prolonged period of healing for him to survive, and even then, he will be left with a scar that will be partially disabling, but that he can, if sufficiently motivated (by you), learn to ignore most of the time. He may not be safely scarred in for at least two years, before you can even begin to start thinking about your taker. The catch-22 is that the MB principles that are proven successful cannot really be applied in the case of the wayward's needs for an indeterminate period, at least until there is sufficient scar. If you want to help your H and save your marriage, you will have to understand this. Lord knows, it is NOT EASY. It is excruciating, but still pales in comparison to the pain he is experiencing, whether or not he is honest about that pain totally or not right now. You have to remember that a marriage is not really two individuals somehow "working it out". It is a single entity, in which the needs of the one are subservient to the needs of the whole, until death do you part. You are simply going to have to learn to experience and hold in your own pain, to sacrifice your needs for some indeterminate healing period, without regard or thought to whose share of "fault" anything that went before was. When it gets to be too much, just be honest and say you are needing some alone time, and go into another room and meditate on these things, read part of a book, take a few deep breaths, and then go back and renew your efforts.

You inflicted a near mortal wound. You did it. You own it. Commit yourself to the sacrifice needed to get him to the point where you can both also look at "her needs" to complete the equation. Regardless of what Dr. Harley says, I believe that is the truth. If you cannot emotionally commit to that, or even by reasoning and cerebral will commit to that, then you are not going to succeed. And remember, that if you can do this, it still may not succeed. He may not be able to heal sufficiently. But regardless of that, you will go back into the world a more complete person, more able to be a partner in a healthy relationship.

I hope this helps. I am in the midst of my own struggle to deal with these issues myself. The pain and damage I inflicted were far greater than your own. I am still emotionally struggling mightily to deal with the same reality you are. That gives me less experience to advise you than most of the very wise people here in most ways, but possibly some ability to advise you that you can relate to more at this stage. Really, SW. This ball is in your court totally. Are you up to it?

Last edited by GreenMile; 08/01/10 12:15 PM.

FWH, age 63. 24 years of narcissistic behavior, infidelity, and emotional abandonment of my BS, age 57, DancesWithGoats (DWG). D-day two years ago, leading to emotional breakdown. Been working MB program and toward spiritual transformation and personal growth since then, with some slow but real progress. DWG still with no trust, but with grief starting to subside a bit.
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Originally Posted by saddestwife
THX GM. THX everyone actually. All this input is really helping me clarify.
Originally Posted by GreenMile
you have been looking out for #1 all your life.

The end result is the same, but my problem is the reverse -- I have been looking out for everyone but me. I've been in IC for years trying to bring my Giver and Taker into balance.

When I first got married I read somewhere that you should give 100% to the M regardless of what your partner was giving, and I ran with that. No sacrifice was beyond me. "Sure honey, go hunting for 4 days and leave me at home with 3 small children after working 60 hours this week." And don't jump on me for keeping score. It's just an example.

I got mad, then I got numb, then I got naked.

Originally Posted by Greenmile
You are simply going to have to learn to experience and hold in your own pain, to sacrifice your needs for some indeterminate healing period, without regard or thought to whose share of "fault" anything that went before was. When it gets to be too much, just be honest and say you are needing some alone time, and go into another room and meditate on these things, read part of a book, take a few deep breaths, and then go back and renew your efforts.

The 24/7 thing is too much. I had the second panic attack of my whole life yesterday afternoon -- whole shebang, pounding heart, shaking, tingling fingertips. I have to get away from him for a few hours. I don't have an agenda. I just need to breathe.

I liked it way better back when I didn't have any needs, or at least any needs that I knew of. Actually, the only need I have right now is the need to not be scared. I liked it way better when I hadn't done anything more wrong than plant shade flowers in the sun or buy paper towels in bulk at Costco.

Originally Posted by Greenmile
Are you up to it?

It's looking doubtful. I don't think I can do this for two more months. Two years is out of the question.

I don't think I can unilaterally disarm even if I wanted to, and I don't want to. It's too dangerous. My pre - A fear of him was well founded. My defenses were built for very legitimate reasons.

I'm really depressed and this is about the last place a discouraged WW should come. I think being berated when I am depressed and discouraged feels normal to me. H knows something is wrong but he doesn't know what, and it is making him nervous. I don't know how to articulate the despair so I am pretending I'm fine but I am not fine and he knows it and the fact that he knows it means I am losing my touch and that makes me panic too and I have got to get a grip.

I thought I was going to be able to talk to SteveH tomorrow, but that window closed. The program doesn't seem adaptive to implementation from the WS's side. I am jealous of all that WW's whose BH's are Plan A'ing them. Some vision that things could be different someday would give me some hope. Right now, all I see is the prospect of more years of lying, lying, lying about what I am thinking and needing. I am beyond sick of lying. So I've pretty much shut up. Again.

I'm hoping to return to numb in the very near future. Numb was good, or at least better than this. My S19 is coming with his GF and he can look at me and tell in an instant that something is wrong so I have GOT to get a grip. And my MIL is coming tomorrow with H's married sister and her longtime BF (yes, you read that right.)

The fun never stops.

I am eyeing the opening day of dove season hungrily.



skeptical You're a great writer, too bad it's all BS.


Widowed 11/10/12 after 35 years of marriage
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“In a sense now, I am homeless. For the home, the place of refuge, solitude, love-where my husband lived-no longer exists.” Joyce Carolyn Oates, A Widow's Story
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I thought I'd leave you with a few thoughts but I think it sounds more like a broken record at this point.

YOU can CHOOSE to be honest or you can CHOOSE to be a liar. Your choice. You can blame it on years of having built up this or that because of psychological and emotional this and that. Or you can start living today being honest in all things.

You do not have to tolerate unhealthy treatment of others to you. And you can also stop tolerating yourself to treat others badly.

Readlly it's up to you whether you want it or not. And all this long, sweeping introspective waxing poetic sounds nice. But really it's not that difficult.

You are no more mistreated than many of the others on here. And you repay others by mistreating them. So, it's up to you, make the changes to make you a better person and a better relationship. Or continue to wallow in self misery.

Good luck to you. I'm out.


Husband (me) 39
Wife 36
Daughter 21
Daughter 19
Son 14
Daughter 10
Son 8 (autistic)

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